First UM start will be worth wait for Willis
Defensive tackle transfer from UF motivated after sitting out last year.
CORAL GABLES — Sunday is the day Gerald Willis has been thinking about for the past year.
After making the decision to sit out last season for personal reasons, Willis has felt just about every emotion, from frustration to anticipation.
Frustration because he was left watching the Hurricanes’ 10-win season from the sideline. Anticipation because his first game back comes against LSU — the biggest football program in his home state — Sunday in Arlington, Texas.
“It was a lot of motivation,” Willis, a New Orleans native, said of the prospect of facing LSU. “Just
Hurricanes No. 8 Miami vs.
No. 25 LSU, 7:30 p.m., Sunday, ABC, Arlington, Texas
The first official weekend of college football is upon us, which every year is like welcoming back a friend who decided to go into hiding for seven months, occasionally touching base as if to tease us and remind us what we’re missing.
All seven FBS schools are in action this week, with games stretching from Thursday to Monday and every day in between, except today.
Three are Must Watch TV: Saturday, FAU at Oklahoma, noon ( just to say you saw it if the Owls pull off the upset). Sunday, Miami vs. LSU at Arlington, Texas, 7:30 p.m. Monday, Virginia Tech at FSU, 8 p.m.
So prepare yourself for a topsy-turvy season with several storylines, some of which we tackle here:
Last laugh
Criticize UCF all you want for the parade down Main Street (Disney style) to go along with the national championship rings, banners, shirts and license plates. This week it became official: The NCAA is officially recognizing UCF as a national champion, doing so in big bold letters on page 115 of this season’s media guide:
2017 Alabama:
College Football Playoff, AP, FW-NFF, USA Today
+UCF: Colley
(Note: Wes Colley publishes the Colley Matrix Rankings, which is recognized by the NCAA.)
UCF (13-0) was the only undefeated team in the country last season and knocked off Auburn in the Peach Bowl — after Auburn defeated the two teams that played in the national championship game, Georgia and Alabama, in November.
The bowl win led to a heated debate sparked by UCF athletic director Danny White, whose decision to label his team the national champion accomplished exactly what he intended.
The Knights opened their defense of that title Thursday at Connecticut. Prepare yourself for the howls and ridicule the day the nation’s longest winning streak is snapped.
Coaching carousel
The 2017 season wasn’t exactly a banner year for our two pre-eminent state universities. Florida State (7-6) and Florida (4-7) combined for 11 wins. The last time these two powerhouses combined for fewer wins was 1974, when the Seminoles managed just one and the Gators eight.
Both schools have undergone a change at the top, although for different reasons. Texas A&M dug into its limitless well of cash and threw $75 million at Jimbo Fisher, while Jim McElwain just dug his own hole and the Gators threw him in it.
Now, both programs will have new coaches when they meet in Tallahassee: Willie Taggart for FSU,
Dan Mullen for UF.
Those first-year coaches on the sidelines 58 years ago: FSU’s Bill Peterson and UF’s Ray Graves.
Lane Train getting crowded
No matter what happens this season, the hiring of Lane Kiffin by former FAU Athletic Director Pat Chun was brilliant, and for more reasons than 11-3.
Kiffin knows how to keep the brand in the spotlight, whether it’s engineering one of the most impressive turnarounds in the country — from 3-9 in each of the previous three seasons to 11-3 in 2017 — or keeping a high profile on social media. And if you think the noise surrounding FAU’s program is loud now, wait to see what happens if the Owls find a way to defeat the Sooners on Saturday. It will be deafening.
If that happens (and probably even if it doesn’t), enjoy it all you can because the Lane Train likely will be departing Boca Raton at the end of the season for a lucrative stop somewhere else on the college football track.
State’s longest losing streak
Miami has won 19 games in Mark Richt’s first two seasons, its most successful two-year run since 2002-03. The stretch includes 10 straight wins to start 2017 and a rise to No. 2 in the polls.
What happened next is what the Canes must overcome to take that next step.
Miami’s season unraveled, with the Hurricanes dropping their last three games by a combined 96-41 count. That gives them the longest losing streak among state schools entering the season.
Even though there’s an emphasis on closing this season, the Hurricanes will be facing a lot of questions if they drop their opener Sunday against LSU.
Quarterback quandaries
The state had its share of quarterback competitions during the preseason with Miami (Malik Rosier) and UCF (McKenzie Milton) the only teams that entered set at the position.
Deondre Francois reclaimed his job at FSU after missing nearly all of last season with an injury (beating out, among others, Glades Central graduate James Blackman); Feleipe Franks retained his spot at Florida after an underwhelming 2017 season; and graduate transfer Blake Barnett will start for South Florida after spending two years at Alabama and one at Arizona State.
Which leaves Kiffin and FIU’s Davis — the only coaches in the state who have been head coaches in the NFL — as the two holdouts, perhaps clinging to the archaic thinking that keeping their decision from the enemy gives them some sort of an advantage.
Under the radar
Can you name the state team with the most wins in the last three years? No, it’s not the team with the nation’s longest unbeaten streak, or the only other team that won its conference championship and bowl game and enters the season on a double-digit winning streak. And it’s not one of the Big Three.
South Florida, the most underappreciated team in the state, was 10-2 in Charlie Strong’s first season, its losses to Houston and UCF by a combined 11 points. The Bulls spent all but one week in the rankings last year, peaking at No. 16.
USF has 29 wins over the past three seasons — two more than FSU and Miami — and has placed in the top 25 of the final poll (21, 19) in each of the past two.
Drain the Swamp
The best thing to happen to Florida State last year was Florida. If not for the Gators’ 4-7 disaster, the Seminoles would have been the state’s biggest underachiever at 7-6. Florida was the only FBS team in the state with a losing record.
And here’s the thing: Do you know how difficult it is for Florida to win just four games? The schedule typically has five built-in wins with Kentucky, Vanderbilt and the Gators still scheduling three nonconference patsies each year. Last season, UF did a rare thing and tested itself in the opener ... and failed, losing to Michigan. The Gators then had one of those gimmes (Northern Colorado) taken away because of Hurricane Irma.
Now it’s up to Mullen to break the trend of inadequate coaching and subpar recruiting and get this program, which has averaged fewer than seven wins over the past five years, back on track.